Big ques­tion, plus your let­ters

After stop­ping for a wee and a drink in a coun­try lane, I re­mounted, lost my bal­ance clip­ping in and plunged into a ditch of net­tles. I ex­tracted my­self and my steed, thank­ful no one was about, only to be met with quiet ap­plause from two pen­sion­ers at a bus stop I hadn’t no­ticed were there. They had wit­nessed the wee, the drink, the fall and the emer­gence of the bog crea­ture. I cy­cled quickly away to no­tice my Garmin was miss­ing! I had to go back... I found the Garmin, but not a shred of cred­i­bil­ity or self-re­spect.

Gra­ham Howard

While at­tempt­ing the world record for the most coun­tries cy­cled in seven days (bro­ken!). In­stead of ap­ply­ing Muc-off Chamois to my parts I put on Muc-off re­cov­ery (Deep Heat). Never again will you see me dance around a for­est in Slove­nia like that!

Rob­bie Ferri Rid­ing along an A-road do­ing about 26mph when a mo­torist slowed to pass me so his pas­sen­ger could whip my lower back/bot­tom with his leather belt. Pass­ing a cou­ple of inches from my han­dle­bars. Wing mir­ror folded in so he could get closer.

Mark Tay­lor

Get­ting kid­napped at gun­point by four armed men on the Mex­i­can/gu­atemalan bor­der. Some­one stepped out into the road from the jun­gle, put a gun in my face and dragged us off the road. We were held there for 20 min­utes while they went through all our pan­niers and held us on the floor with guns to our heads. We lost both our phones, cam­eras, bank cards and cash, but luck­ily we got away with our lives. A Mex­i­can po­lice pa­trol came down the high­way and the guys legged it into the jun­gle and back across the bor­der to Gu­atemala. Prob­a­bly my worst day on the bike... that and the day I got 11 punc­tures.

Richard Rid­ing

Head down, time tri­alling flat-out in a race. Sud­denly hear a crunch­ing sound from my bot­tom bracket, look down to see it’s com­pletely wrecked and come un­done, both ped­als are now fac­ing down­wards and the bot­tom bracket is sway­ing side to side in the frame. Need­less to say that was race over.

Ross Wil­liams

Think­ing it would be ‘easy’ cy­cling in the nice flat Fens of Cam­bridgeshire. Didn’t fac­tor in 20 miles of un­in­ter­rupted head­wind and noth­ing but loooong straight road ahead. You could see your des­ti­na­tion but, boy, it seemed like for­ever to get there. Ut­ter mis­ery.

Cather­ine Smith

Rid­ing home from a jum­ble sale with two pa­per­back books in a plas­tic bag dan­gling over the han­dle­bars. Re­al­is­ing it might be dan­ger­ous, I wound the bag around my hand. This caused the bag to en­ter the wheel be­hind the forks. I ripped six spokes out of the rim. Tore both pa­per­backs clean in half and went over the han­dle­bars, land­ing on my face. There was blood ev­ery­where, which didn’t go down well with my mum as I was wear­ing an Aran jumper she had re­cently fin­ished knit­ting. It took a month for my face to heal but I was rid­ing again on the Mon­day morn­ing as it was my only transport to work.

Ian Mitchell

In­ner-city cy­clist spank­ing: a new craze among Bri­tain’s driv­ers?